Sentiment in favor of the practical skill of women seems not to have been wanting. They cooked and washed, and the law required them to spin and gather flax, and on one notable occasion women exhibited their skill at the spinning wheel, publicly, on Boston Common. As soon as they could get around to it they no doubt matched the skill of their English kindred whom Hollingshed described a half century earlier. He says, “The females knit or net the nets for sportsmen:
“‘Fine ferne stitch, finny stitch, new stitch, and chain stitch,
Brave broad stitch, fischer stitch, Irish stitch, and queen stitch,
The Spanish stitch, rosemary stitch and mowse stitch;
All these are good, and these we must allow,
And these are everywhere in practice now.’”
Aside from their belief in the primary importance of religious training, it may be conceded that the men of colonial times did not lack the sagacity which led Charlemagne in the eighth century to require that the children of those who were to participate in the government should be educated, “in order that intelligence might rule the Empire.” The application of this principle in his limited empire opened education to the ruling class; in America it opened it to the ruling sex.
How small were the opportunities for instruction, outside the free schools, may be known from the fact that the committee for supervising them enjoined upon the selectmen to take care that no person should open a private school except upon their recommendation.
In 1656 a Mr. Jones having opened a private school was visited by the magistrates, who exacted a promise from him to give up the school at the close of the winter term. Apparently he was reluctant in so doing, for it is recorded that the next spring Mr. Jones was sent for by the selectmen “for keeping a Schoole, and required to perform his promise to the Towne in the Winter, to remove himselfe and familye in the Springe, and forbiden to keep Schoole any longer.”
The first opportunities for girls in the colonies were in the “Dame-School,” in which some woman was hired to gather the little children about her knee to teach them their letters from the New England Primer. They were required to commit to memory the shorter catechism, and sometimes were taught to read enough to decipher it for themselves, from the last pages of their only book, the famous Primer. Training in manners was made of prime importance.